Keynote Speakers

Prof. Mathias Jucker

At the Department of Cellular Neurology we are studying the cellular and molecular mechanisms reponsible for brain aging and the question why some people develop dementia at an advanced age. At the centre of our research is the most common and severe form of dementia, Alzheimer's disease. The pathological hallmarks are misfolded proteins which form so-called amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain of the patients and irreversably destroy brain cell tissue.

We have succeeded in generating mouse models which develop these lesions and thus mimic the disease process in humans. First promising experiments to prevent amyloid deposits in the brains of these mice have taken us one important step closer to a possible Alzheimer therapy.

Prof. Trevor Robbins

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK

Fractionating impulsivity: neuropsychiatric implications

Trevor Robbins was appointed in 1997 as the Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the Chair of Expt. Psychology (and Head of Department) at Cambridge from October 2002. He is also Director of the newly-established Cambridge MRC Centre in Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience, the main objective of which is to inter-relate basic and clinical research in Psychiatry and Neurology for such conditions as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases, frontal lobe injury, schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction and developmental syndromes such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

He has been included on a list of the 100 most cited neuroscientists by ISI. He has published nearly five hundred full papers in scientific journals and has co-edited three books (Psychology for Medicine: The Prefrontal Cortex; Executive and Cognitive Function, and Disorders of Brain and Mind).